1. Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to communication systems; and, more particularly, it relates to interfacing between at least two signal types within such communication systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Communication systems have been under continual development for many years. As technology continues to improve, there is a seemingly constant introduction of new technology into the various technology markets. This is true also in the communication system technology space. One problem that may arise when newer technology is introduced into a communication system that also includes older, legacy components is a difficulty in the interfacing of the signals generated by the newer devices with those older, legacy devices that expect signaling in the earlier, legacy signal type format.
This difficulty in performing the interfacing between various signal types can be extremely problematic when a high expenditure is necessary to update a particular technology market to ensure that all devices are operable using the newer signaling. Oftentimes, the economic (and/or logistical) considerations are simply prohibitive to do so. In an effort to combat this, effort is typically focused to ensure that the newer generation devices (and their respective signaling) are backward compatible with the older, legacy devices. However, when there is a relatively significant leap in the technology from the legacy devices to the newer devices, this backward compatibility can often be associated with a loss of performance. The vision of the designers of the legacy devices sometimes cannot adequately design an initial design (which becomes a legacy design) that will accommodate the backward compatibility with newer designs.
Within many communication systems, the increased flow of information, and consequently the increased associated data rates, often require that any interfacing between legacy signaling and newer signaling must be performed extremely efficiently (and sometimes extremely quickly). Many designs do not allow a great deal of processing resources to be allocated to perform this interfacing between legacy and newer devices (including interfacing their respective signaling). As such, there exists a need for an efficient approach that can accommodate the interfacing between legacy and newer technologies.